gcc to generate IA32 assembly

Using this very simple C program as an example:

void main() {
   int x, y;
   x = 1;
   x = x + 2;
   x = x - 14;
   y = x*100;
   x = x + y * 6;
}

You can compile to IA32 assembly, to a .o file, and to an executable file and compare the assembly code in each one:

To compile to the 32-bit version of x86 instructions, use the -m32 flag (and version 4.4 generates easier to read IA32 code):

gcc -m32 -S simpleops.c   # just runs the assembler to create a .s text file
gcc -m32 -c simpleops.s   # compiles to a relocatable object binary file (.o) 
gcc -m32 -o simpleops simpleops.o  # creates a 32-bit executable file

To see the machine code and assembly code mappings in the .o file:

objdump -d simpleops.o

You can compare this to the assembly file:

cat simpleops.s

will give you something like this (I've annotated some of the assembly code with its corresponding code from the C program):

        .file   "simpleops.c"
        .text
.globl main
        .type   main, @function
main:
        pushl   %ebp
        movl    %esp, %ebp
        subl    $16, %esp
        movl    $1, -4(%ebp)      # x = 1
        addl    $2, -4(%ebp)      # x = x + 2
        subl    $14, -4(%ebp)     # x = x - 14
        movl    -4(%ebp), %eax    # load x into R[%eax]
        imull   $100, %eax, %eax  # into R[%eax] store result of x*100
        movl    %eax, -8(%ebp)    # y = x*100
        movl    -8(%ebp), %edx
        movl    %edx, %eax
        addl    %eax, %eax
        addl    %edx, %eax
        addl    %eax, %eax
        addl    %eax, -4(%ebp)
        leave
        ret
        .size   main, .-main
        .ident  "GCC: (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.4.7-8ubuntu1) 4.4.7"
        .section        .note.GNU-stack,"",@progbits

See my Tools for examining different parts of compiling C page for more information on objump and other tools for examinging binary code, and also some gcc compilation flags for production .o and .s files.